Sergio De La Pava - Personae

* * *

HE said “I’d explain it to you but I fear you’d start your own coffee shop and steal my few, if loyal, customers.”

“Sorry,” she laughed. “Didn’t realize. Just that coffee’s coffee isn’t it?”

“What do you do? I mean when you’re not making wholly inaccurate declarations.”

“I work at the flower shop across the street,” she pointed.

“Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean aren’t all flowers pretty much the same?”

“You cannot be serious.”

“I can but I’m not.”

“Comparing flowers, in their infinite variety, to coffee?”

“Let’s do this then,” he started carefully measuring out grounds for an espresso. “Drink this, on the house therefore no risk, then we’ll continue our debate.” She smiled and it was one of the great ones.

2 He started by ensuring that the particulars of the shot he was about to pull were precisely calibrated to produce the desired effect. There was only one legitimate way, regrettably long forgotten or ignored since: one ounce of water (these are not approximations) through eight ounces of single-bean coffee at 200 degrees Fahrenheit and most importantly pulled for exactly twenty-two seconds. He put the result in front of her.

“Not a very generous sample is it?”

“That’s intentional neophyte. Drink. Slowly.”

3 She drank it, slowly, her pinky extending naturally. She looked up, her chin rising only slightly.

“I don’t know what to think of that.”

“Perfect.”

“It’s slightly confusing.”

4 He smiled and she repaid him with another great one. Then she said:

“Wait. It’s great, I love it. Just needed time.”

“See?”

“Explain.”

“What am I explaining?”

“Why it’s so great. Remember I thought coffee was coffee.”

“Right. Well there’s two explanations: a highly technical one implicating the precise particulars of Colombian climate, soil, and other factors; and the other just reducing to the fact that life is a lot more tolerable with a craft.”

“There you speak truth.”

5 She drank the rest and nodded yes.

“Makes you wonder how many other things there are like that, doesn’t it sir?”

“You mean?”

“That are susceptible to great enhancement through human craft but sadly remain unexploited. As for you, I hope your craft’s not businessman.”

“Really? Because?”

“Because my craft is assembling flowers artfully and I came in here with the intention of spending money on food during my very brief coffee break only now I realize that said break is almost over and our profitless-to-you conversation consumed just about all of it.”

“I see. There’s more than one form of profit though.”

“Can I see what you offer so I can get a leg up on my next visit?”

6 He handed her two clean laminated menus. One dealt exclusively with coffees and all their possible permutations. It was extensive and wordy and took on almost novelistic qualities. The other one looked like this:

7 Her response to this menu was to assert that it required more explanation than even the transcendent espresso, to which he replied that his kitchen was not comfortable operating at the whim of any customer who chose to walk through the door. Accordingly they’d drastically reduced the available options to force their clientele to voice only their most elemental desires which they then met in whatever manner they saw fit.

8 She said she thought that was insane so he requested and received an opportunity to explain further.

9 A restaurant differs in kind from almost any other business. Viewed a certain way the consumption of food was not just necessary to but also the reason for our existence. Not surprisingly then all kinds of psychic implications result from the human-to-human provision of food. This in turn makes certain restaurants something like second homes.

10 Answer this then. Would you go into someone’s home and give precise instructions detailing what you wished to eat and drink?

“But don’t you have to tell people what they’re potentially ordering?”

“If they ask, but frankly it’s none of their business.”

“And it’s the same thing every time?”

“No it changes daily, I’m not a savage. Well it changes provided the Jankees haven’t kept me up too late the night before.”

“The what?”

“The New York Yankees. I’m poking fun at an accent I used to have.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you miss the place that caused it?”

“Fewer times.”

“I sure miss my accent. Transylvania caused it.”

“Thought I was picking up some Transylvanian.”

11 They laughed and held a common look a bit longer than usual.

12 Marybeth stood and walked toward the door because the thing she’d said about the coffee break was true and she needed to get back especially in light of some recent pointed comments.

“Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow for lunch and order Sandwich.”

“You’d know better than me.”

“True, I’ll be back tomorrow for lunch.”

“On one condition.”

“That?”

“That you leave yourself enough time. Hate to see rushed humanity. Life has sped up too much and it falls on us to slow it down.”

“Deal.”

13 She turned to leave and, somehow, for the first time, he noticed a severe limp, obviously long-term, that made her every step a form of struggle. The door had emitted its usual chime when she opened it and now the dolorous decay of that sound, the sight of her rhythmic exertions, and the shame at what he’d said all combined to form a low-level desolation.

* * *

HE is nearing the light. What began as almost a rumor of light has grown in intensity as he’s drawn near. But this is not a warm, comforting light. This is a harsh airy substance that exposes what until then had only seemed probable.

2 When he gets to the clearing it is the obvious site of an attempted uprising. The bodies are all men, former men. But not the right kind of men for what they tried. No these were men who gathered in a church to pray to an all-knowing God and men like that cannot be ready for what descended on them. Even worse, men like that could and obviously did draw the erroneous conclusion that the people holding them had a clear goal in mind, a goal separable from violence that served as motive and lessened their danger. It was the kind of error that ended lives and the kind of error he never seemed to make.

3 As with all the bodies he encounters he feels first relief then an animalistic welling anger that cries for release. He tamps it down and studies the bodies for information. There are maybe fifteen of them.

4 They have guns and knives but the guns, with the exception of one or two, don’t seem so deadly. He doubts anyway that they can operate theirs like he can his.

5 Then he sees something that promises conflict. Underneath one of the few bodies that evidences any sign of a struggle is a gun. The gun is very telling and will be the reason for the imminent conflict. It is old, previous century model, and has the look, feel, really all five senses, of having been repeatedly transferred from dead to living through multiple generations. This means it was not left there intentionally and is precisely the kind of thing its owner will be returning for.

6 It will be important for him to remember, when those men return, that they are responsible for the many deaths of people who were doing nothing more aggressive than sitting in a church.